This blog's title is based upon the best question I ever overheard being asked, by a young Liverpudlian child to his mother, as in "What's..?".
The answer seems to be something of a creative and cultural nature which, in deed (primarily the making of art) and word, this blog intends to explore...

Monday, December 09, 2013

Badge of the Day #32 (Hajduk Split)

Following on from yesterday’s post, today we present the latest exhibit from the European football club collection & that handsome badge featuring the crest of Croatia's finest, Hajduk Split, the other of the two irresistible-to-love names of 1970s Yugoslavian soccer, &, in the case of Hajduk, it certainly was the sheer exoticism of the name that appealed, as it still does, more than any other factor (although in those early years, one tended to represent it erroneously as ‘hadge-uk’, as Bob Wilson once memorably did during an edition of ‘Football Focus’). If Hajduk Split hadn’t emerged on the register by the time of the coming of the 1976-77 Panini Euro Football sticker album, they certainly would have on the occasion of.

The crest itself is both the current & former one of the club, featuring the chequered red & white squares of the Croatian flag, which always has a certain dandyesque aesthetic appeal, but, during the lifetime of the unified political entity, was replaced by the Yugoslav red star, the encircling legend ‘Hajduk Split’ remaining, which in itself is another badge to be desired, both aesthetically & from the familiar ‘Ostalgie’.

Regular participants in the European club competitions, thus keeping the name alive in one’s heart & mind, the team are currently tucked in second place domestically behind the perma-dominant Dinamo Zagreb, against whom Hajduk salvaged a stoppage time equaliser in their most recent league fixture, which, in an ideal world, might be the harbinger of a shift in power, although, of course, our devotion is never dependent upon on-field success, welcome as that might be.